David Kaiser <dkai...@cdk.com> wrote:
1. Preamble. I am primarily sending this e-mail HOWTO because I have used Open
Tax Solver for 2 years now, and I want to share with others a "success story"
and that there is a 100% open source solution to calculate taxes. (Of course,
you could probably use a spreadsheet or calculator, and also have a 100% open
source solution...) Open Tax Solver will compute the US Form 1040 including
Schedule A in one form, Schedule C in another form, yet does NOT have Schedule
SE capabilities (but you can use a PDF manually there). Open Tax Solver also
supports several state forms, including the California 540 form. For my
example, I am a California resident, and I file the long form (1040, not
1040EZ) and I do itemized deductions (Schedule A), and also report some
business and self-employed income (Schedule C -and- Schedule SE). If you follow
a different pattern, you should be able to learn from this HOWTO but will need
to read the documentation to develop your own approach. 2. Pre-requis
ites.
Create a working directory: (mkdir ~/taxes-2010; cd ~/taxes-2010) The remainder
of this document will assume the present directory is this working directory.
From the http://www.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsPublications.html site,
search for "1040" and then use the browser to Right-Click and save the
appropriate PDF files (for 1040, Schedule A, Schedule C, Schedule SE) into the
working directory. The files should be saved as f1040.pdf f1040sa.pdf
f1040sc.pdf f1040sse.pdf. You'll need these at the end... Repeat for the
10_540.pdf and 10_540ca.pdf files from
http://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/search/index.aspx 3. Software Preparation. Download
OpenTaxSolver from http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ and save it in the
working directory Unpack the software distribution: tar xzvf
OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04.tgz (If rebuilding the software from source, change into
the OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04 directory and run the sh script that starts with
"Build_taxsolve...") I can't help or support if your
system
does not build the binaries correctly, but the binaries in the distribution
have worked for me. From this point on, I will assume the binaries will run
from ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin - if you build and install elsewhere, adjust
the instructions. 4. Make local copies of template forms. Copy the proper
examples to your working directory, renaming from 'template' to 'mine' (or your
name or initials or whatever you can use to remember that they contain your
data). The 'template' files you are copying from are empty templates with 0's
(or empty string) values in the various fields. cp
OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/US_1040/US_1040_template.dat
./US_1040_mine.dat cp
OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/US_1040_Sched_C/US_1040Sched_C_2010_template.dat
./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat cp
OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/examples_and_templates/CA_540/CA_540_2010_template.dat
./CA_540_2010_mine.dat 5. Use the OpenTaxSolver GUI to fill in the Schedule C
form (if needed).
/OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/ots_gui ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat # enter in the
Schedule C values from any 1099-misc or other business income # Click SAVE and
save it back to the file you specified on the commandline then click 'Exit' --
for Schedule C, don't click the 'Compute Tax' button in the GUI, see Step 6
below 6. Use the 'taxsolve' CLI tool to solve the Schedule C dat file and save
the results to an out file.
./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/taxsolve_US_2010_Sched_C_2010
./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.dat > ./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.out less
./US_1040_Sched_C_mine.out # inspect the computed output values, save this file
for later 7. Use Evince or Acroread to fill-in the f1040sse.pdf form (only
necessary if you have self-employment income. Read the IRS document on
self-employment and Schedule SE) Line 2 of this Schedule SE PDF needs the value
from Schedule C computed output. This PDF needs to be computed by hand - before
continuing on to the 1040 form. 8. Use the OpenTaxSolver GUI to f
ill in
the US 1040 form. ./OpenTaxSolver2010_8.04/bin/ots_gui ./US_1040_mine.dat #
enter in the values for form 1040 and Schedule A # note: Line27 on Page 4 and
L56 on Page 9 come from the Schedule SE you calculated by hand in the PDF form
(if you have any self-employment income or taxes) # When all completed, click
SAVE to save the 1040 dat file back to the file you specified on the invoking
commandline # Click 'Compute Tax' button. The gui will call the taxsolve CLI
and write it to a new out file in the working directory. 9. Inspect the
computed results less ./US_1040_mine.out * Observe that OpenTaxSolver has
computed: - all necessary lines for 1040 form - Schedule D, if needed (Capital
Gain/Loss) - Schedule A, itemized deductions - Schedule L, itemized deductions
(if necessary) - AMT form 6251 (Alternative Minimum Tax, if applicable) -
Schedule M, - Any other worksheets used to determine eligibilities - Tax from
tax tables 10. Fill in the PDF forms. Use evince or acroread to open
the
f1040.pdf, f1040sa.pdf, f1040sc.pdf & f1040sse.pdf files (and other files if
you are affected by Schedule D, L, M or AMT) Transfer the values from the 1040
output file to the proper locations in the f1040 and f1040sa PDFs. Transfer the
values from the ScheduleC output to the f1040sc.pdf. Double-check the Schedule
SE PDF. This part is a few more minutes of tedious work. (It would be nice of
there was an application that could read the output text file and do automatic
form-filling of all the PDF files.) Save the PDF files. I could get evince to
edit the form values, but it failed to write out a new PDF when I wanted to
save the file. Acroread worked perfectly. Print, sign and mail your forms.
Repeat Steps 8-10 with the CA 540 form. (California Residents) You will need to
run the CLI taxsolve utility on the CA_540 dat file (instead of clicking the
'Compute Tax' button in the GUI. I had, towards the end of the process tonight,
discovered that I had neglected to include one tax l
ine
from one of my W2's that I had pre-paid last year. I basically ran steps 8-10
again, by loading my 1040 dat file, clicked forward a few pages, adjusted the
value and clicked the 'Compute Tax' button. It updated all the right values. I
then just walked back through my PDF file and adjusted the few locations that
had changed while walking through the 'out' file. It only took about 5 minutes
to adjust everything once I had noticed my mistake, and was worth about $350 to
have corrected the error to receive the correct refund. It doesn't quite do the
"bubble-up" approach of the commercial tax prep packages, but it is still quite
usable once you get the workflow down. 11. Back-up files. When you are
completely finished, you should be able to back-up the entire working
directory, including the government-issue PDF forms, your data input and output
files, and the OpenTaxSolver software itself. I have not tried resurrecting and
re-running previous versions of the software, but the
(text-file) formats are open, and the software is open source, so theoretically
you should be able to repeat this process whenever you need to in the future. I
plan on keeping any version of software used along with my data files. 12.
Disclaimer This message is informational only on use of open-source software.
No tax calculation advice is implied by me. If you have doubts of the accuracy
of Open Tax Solver, or suspect an error, you may wish to re-compute your tax
using another method, or consult a licensed tax professional. There is no
warranty or implied expectation of performance of this software or HOWTO
document._____________________________________________
LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org
http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
Awesome howto. Thanks for taking the time to document the process and share it
with us.
Doing my taxes this weekend so this was quite timely. :)
--
charles n wyble
Systems craftsman to the stars
Xmpp/sip/smtp char...@knownelement.com
Office: 310 929 8793
Cell: 626 539 4344
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